In 1673, fifteen-year-old Maria d'Este traveled from Italy to marry James, Duke of York, the future King of England and a man twenty-five years her senior. Thrust from a pious life on the path to become a nun, at the debauched court of Charles II she set about recreating the world she'd left behind - a world where women were highly educated, exercised power and celebrated art and artists with concentrated patronage.

The Graces is a spellbinding narrative drawing from re-discovered letters to and from Maria, later known as Mary of Modena, that resurrects her life and those of the extraordinary young women she surrounded herself with at the Restoration court. From Sarah Jennings, later Sarah Churchill, keen politician and 'favourite' of Queen Anne, to revered poet Anne Finch and founder of legendary literary salon Hortense Mancini, these were women who defied the conventions of their time and the forces of misogyny working against them. The era they lived through would be one of the most tumultuous England had seen: one where parliament would invite a foreign power in the form of William of Orange to invade England, depose its king, and risk thrusting the country back into civil war. In this version of history, the lives of Maria and the women around her are forgotten.

If people know of Maria of Modena today, it is most likely as the Catholic queen who, by giving King James II a male, Catholic heir, precipitated the Glorious Revolution. In reality she was one of the most cultured people - man or woman - ever to sit upon the English throne. Her world was a far cry from the Restoration court as we have come to know it, with its mistresses, palaces of debauchery and risqué entertainment. What is much less known is that within this world existed another: a world of female friendship, learning and artistic endeavour. The Graces is that story.